Chapter 117: The Aftermath
The Konoha reinforcement team, seasoned veterans of this brutal war, stood frozen at the edge of the clearing. They had seen death in every form—clean kills, messy ones, victims of ninjutsu reduced to ash or stone. But this… this was different.
The ground was a tapestry of carnage. Bones, some still sheathed in ragged meat, protruded from churned earth. Rivers of dark, congealing blood traced paths through the mud. Dismembered limbs lay where they had fallen, some still clutching weapons. The air was thick with the cloying, metallic scent, so potent it felt like a physical layer on the tongue. Even their hardened stomachs turned, and more than one had to swallow back bile.
And in the center of this painted hell stood a single figure.
He stood upon a mound of broken earth and worse, clad in unrelenting black from head to toe, the blood-red Rakshasa mask a single, stark point of color in the monochrome gore. The black sword in his hand seemed to drink the fading light. He was less a man and more an embodiment of the battlefield's final, silent verdict—a Shura carved from shadow and slaughter.
ANBU. Rakshasa.
A name that had been a whisper a month ago was now a thunderclap echoing across the front lines. His legend was being written in the blood of Konoha's enemies.
First battle: twenty Iwa-nin slaughtered, jonin among them.
Next: the solo extraction of Senju Tsunade from behind enemy lines.
Then: the dismantling of a Suna force, driving the legendary Chiyo to retreat.
And now, this. The complete and utter annihilation of a joint Suna-Iwa strike force that had been a thorn in Konoha's side for weeks.
Ragnar stood immobile for a long moment, not out of reverence or fatigue, but because his system was scrolling.
*[EXP +220]… [EXP +380]… [EXP +510]… [EXP +850]…*
The notifications came in a wave, a tally of the harvest. The combined forces of Suna and Iwa had yielded over 20,000 experience points. His total now soared past 48,000. Fifty thousand was the threshold he'd sensed—a qualitative leap for his Devil Fruit and Haki, a door to a new tier of power.
DING.
A Platinum Treasure Chest materialized in his peripheral vision, a reward for the scale of the victory. He stored it away with a thought, its promise of power a future concern.
Then he moved, walking away from the epicenter of death toward Jiraiya and the stunned Konoha ninja. His steps were unhurried, calm.
"Is it… over?" Jiraiya asked, his voice uncharacteristically subdued.
"Mm." A single, affirmative sound from behind the mask. No pride, no weariness. It was a statement of fact, as neutral as reporting the weather.
What terrifying presence, Namikaze Minato thought, his analytical mind working overtime. This is the entity that makes enemies flee just hearing his codename?
The other Konoha shinobi watched him approach, their earlier fear morphing into a deep, awed respect. In their world, this was the ultimate language.
Gurgle… glug…
A new, unsettling sound drew their attention. From the cracked and sundered earth around where Ragnar had stood, dark, viscous blood was welling up, seeping to the surface as if the ground itself were bleeding.
"What in the world…?" someone muttered.
"B-blood!" Nawaki whimpered, his face a shade of green. His idealized image of Rakshasa had been permanently overwritten by the reality of a slaughterhouse deity.
"Kukuku…" Orochimaru's low chuckle was the only sound that seemed to fit the scene.
Jiraiya's brow furrowed. He stepped forward, hands forming a sequence of seals.
"EARTH RELEASE: EARTH SPLITTING TECHNIQUE!"
The churned ground in front of him liquefied and then parted like a curtain, rolling back to reveal the substrata. What it revealed wasn't soil and rock.
It was a mélange of horror. Chunks of flesh, pulverized bone, shredded fabric in Suna colors, and the twisted, broken components of digging puppets were churned together with the earth into a ghastly, crimson mortar. The pressure from above had been so immense it had compacted bodies and machinery into an indistinguishable paste.
"BLECH—!" Nawaki lost his fight, vomiting violently again. The 'last man of the Senju' was having a very rough day.
Every Konoha ninja present stared, their faces masks of shock and revulsion. The corpses pulled from the soil were far more grotesque than the ones littering the surface. There were no bodies, only ingredients in a ghastly stew.
An ANBU scout with a strong stomach moved forward to make a count. After a grim assessment, he reported, voice flat. "More than thirty Suna-nin. At least one confirmed jonin based on armor fragments. All… eliminated. Total enemy casualties between Suna and Iwa forces… estimated at seventy to eighty."
A stunned silence swallowed the clearing. Seventy or eighty shinobi. An entire coordinated harassment force that had plagued them for half a month… gone. In one engagement. By one operative.
Ragnar had no interest in their reactions. His task was complete. He turned and began walking away, a solitary black figure receding into the scarred forest, leaving the aftermath for others to manage. He was Rakshasa. He acted. He did not explain, justify, or linger.
After a long moment, someone found their voice. "Rakshasa… just what kind of monster is he?"
"Kuku… Lord Ragnar," Orochimaru hissed, his golden eyes gleaming with covetous fascination. "I am becoming more and more… interested."
"Th-that's the boss I chose…" Nawaki mumbled, clutching his stomach, his hero-worship now irrevocably tangled with primal fear.
"To not only rescue Orochimaru and Nawaki single-handedly," Jiraiya murmured, his usual bravado absent, "but to also annihilate the very force we've been stalemated against for weeks… It's unbelievable."
A genuine respect, laced with a hint of awe, settled in Jiraiya's chest. Hatake Sakumo hadn't been boasting or deferring. He'd been stating a simple truth: on this mission, Rakshasa was the ultimate authority. His strength was on another plane.
Jiraiya was confident in his own power. He could take on three, maybe four enemy jonin in a protracted fight. But to kill them all, especially a mixed force using hit-and-run tactics, subterranean movement, and puppetry? It was a fantasy. This Rakshasa had turned that fantasy into a brutal, bloody reality.
This is a devastating blow to Suna and Iwa. A blessing for Konoha.
But a question nagged at him. Someone this powerful… they can't be a ghost. Every elite ANBU has a public face. Sakumo is the White Fang. Who is Rakshasa? Jiraiya prided himself on knowing Konoha's players. This void in his knowledge was deeply unsettling.
He would never have guessed the truth: that the demon of the battlefield was the same brooding, intense academy graduate he'd tried to recruit just days before. The idea was laughable. No one would believe it.
Namikaze Minato, however, was staring at the retreating back, a strange thought crystallizing. The set of the shoulders, the proportion of the stride beneath the cloak… It was vague, but it reminded him of someone. Ragnar? He immediately dismissed it. Impossible. The last time I saw him, he was a genin. He can't be the Rakshasa who walks through armies. I'm overthinking it.
But the seed of suspicion was planted. What if…?
"Alright, everyone," Jiraiya's voice cut through the heavy silence, reclaiming his role as the senior jonin present. "Let's clean this up. We can't leave it like this."
The ninja moved to obey, their movements subdued. They began the grim work of gathering the dead—Konoha's enemies—for disposal. The silence was no longer just shock; it was the quiet of profound, unsettling reverence. They worked around the central, blood-soaked zone where the earth still wept, a silent testament to the wrath of the crimson mask.
The legend of Rakshasa had just been cemented in blood and bone, and its shadow would loom large over the rest of the war.
(End of Chapter)
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